Medical military personnel have the unique military and medical task of treating seriously wounded patients for extended periods of time with limited medical supplies and equipment. Soldiers injured in combat may not have the opportunity to be quickly transferred to a medical facility or hospital. Instead, a military medic may have to provide extended medical care to a seriously injured soldier in the field of combat.
To provide effective medical assistance, essential medical supplies must be readily available to the military medics for treating the patient. Because of the combat conditions under which the military medics must be able to treat patients, access to medical supplies is limited. There are certain medical supplies that should always be available to military medics, even in the severest of combat conditions. Such indispensable medical supplies include chest tubes, field dressings, IV containers, IV catheters, eye kits, surgical kits, sterile bandages, tape, and IV bags. A plurality of many of the above supplies need to be carried by the military medic due to the high likelihood of the need to treat a multiple of injuries. Without a plurality of such indispensable medical supplies, the ability of the military medic to treat patients would be unacceptably limited.
To ensure that the above described indispensable medical supplies are available to the military medic at all times, the supplies must be personally carried by the military medic. Military medics must have the ability to manually carry and travel with the medical supplies over rugged terrain. In addition, efficient access to the medical supplies should be available. The capability of the military medic to effectively carry and access this equipment in a combat environment is a determining factor on the medic's ability to treat injured soldiers. In order for the military medic to carry and have proper access to indispensable medical supplies, the medic must be provided with appropriate gear to carry the medical supplies.
The conventional method of the military medic for carrying supplies is by hand-carrying a medical bag containing the medical supplies. There are numerous disadvantages and problems with the military medic's current practice of carrying medical supplies in medical bags. In fact, the problems of using medical bags was accentuated in the recent Desert Shield and Desert Storm conflicts. Medical bags which carried essential medical supplies were cumbersome, bulky, and very difficult to carry in the harsh terrain of the Middle East. One reason that the medical bags were unnecessarily difficult to carry was that the weight of the medical supplies was concentrated and would not be uniformly distributed on the carrier's body. Another reason for the difficulty in traveling with the hand-carried medical bag was that the carrier's hands were unnecessarily occupied.
Because the medical bags were hand carried, there was also the potential problem of medical personnel becoming unintentionally separated from the medical bags and the enclosed medical supplies. For instance, during incoming rounds of enemy fire there was the potential that military medics would become separated from their medical bags. Unfortunately, because of enemy fire and other combat conditions, the possibility of military medics becoming separated from essential medical supplies was unnecessarily high.
Another problem with the prior art medical bags used in the Desert Shield and Desert Storm conflicts was that medical equipment could not be orderly located within the medical bag. When a particular medical supply was needed, the medic had to search throughout the bag to locate the desired medical supply. In limited visibility conditions, such as at night, valuable life-threatening time can be wasted searching for the desired medical supply.
The use of a medical bag to hold medical supplies can also result in problems in keeping the medical bags stocked with all the essential medical supplies. Because supplies in the bag are not positioned in a fixed location that is easily visible, there is the real potential that the absence of a piece of equipment belonging in the medical bag may be overlooked. Such an inventory related mistake could result in the unnecessary loss of life.
The prior art does disclose a vest designed to carry some types of equipment For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,106,121, issued Aug. 15, 1978; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,529,307, issued Sep. 22, 1970; disclose tactical load bearing vests for carrying general military equipment such as canteens. In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 4,637,075, issued Jan. 20, 1987, discloses a vest designed to carry civilian medical supplies. No medical vest is shown in the prior art which is capable of handling the specific medical supplies and other equipment that is required in combat or similar adverse conditions.